Chapter 4: Lessons Learned From a Longitudinal Assessment of the New American Schools Scale-Up Phase During the 1990s

NAS was founded in 1991 to develop, test, and scale-up design-based approaches to comprehensive school reform. RAND conducted an ongoing assessment of the NAS initiative throughout most of the 1990s. This assessment included both quantitative and qualitative methods in a series of studies to understand implementation levels, barriers and enablers, and students’ and schools’ academic progress (see Berends, Bodilly, & Kirby, 2002). Most of the schools in these various analyses were Title I schools serving significant numbers of children in poverty. Near the end of the RAND assessment in 2000, NAS was involved in more than 3,000 schools through the implementation of designs with assistance from NAS design teams.